Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method, a system, a non-transitory computer-readable medium and a computer program product for calibrating time of a physiological data, and especially relates to a method, a system, a non-transitory computer-readable medium and a computer program product for calibrating time of a physiological data, through which a connection with a time calibration device can be established for comparing the counting time between the time calibration device and a physiological monitoring device to obtain a counting time deviation value, and the deviation value is further compared with a predetermined time deviation value to determine if calibration is required.
Description of Related Art
With the development of medical technology and raising awareness of personal health, application of electronic physiological monitoring devices become more prevalent at home, care centres, clinics or hospitals. Nowadays, changes in lifestyles have contributed to an increased number of chronic disease patients, such as patients with diabetes or high blood pressure. An electronic physiological monitoring device is required for regularly monitoring a specific physiological parameter, such that a medication can be administered based on the physiological data. Therefore, in addition to the accuracy of a physiological data, it is also important to obtain a correct measurement time of the physiological data.
Nowadays many electronic devices have a timer function. Take a smart phone for example, its microprocessor may have a timer function or an independent timer module may be incorporated therein. When being connected with a server, time of the server can be obtained for calibration. However, while smart phones usually have multiple functions, frequent connections for time calibration may consume lots of electricity and selling price can be high.
On the other hand, selling price of a general physiological monitoring device is usually less than a smart phone, especially for a home-use physiological monitoring device. For introducing more products to the market, the price cannot be high. Therefore, cost of the product itself should be lower. For example, although the microprocessor used in a physiological monitoring device is similar to that used in a smart phone, it may not have such high standards as used in the smart phone.
Besides, different from the multifunctional smart phones, the main function of a physiological monitoring device is to measure a physiological parameter accurately, and to obtain an accurate measurement time for the physiological parameter. Take an ear thermometer or a blood glucose meter for example, usually the meter is much more often in shutdown mode or standby/sleep mode than in performing measurements. Thus, it does not have many chances to connect and perform time calibration as compared with a smart phone.
Furthermore, different from the completed interfaces of smart phones for touch operations, a physiological monitoring device requires only a simple operation interface. Users of home-use physiological monitoring devices are often older people. Take a blood glucose meter as an example, the whole device may only have a single button. It's quite difficult for an elder user to set four-digit years, two-digit month(s), date, hour(s) and minute(s) just by a single button.
Based on above, a physiological monitoring device may not have a high standard microprocessor as used in a smart phone and may be limited by infrequent and short connections. However, in order to record the measuring time of the physiological data accurately, it requires higher accuracy in recording time than a mobile phone.
When turning on a physiological monitoring device for the first time, a user needs to set time on his/her own, or to correct the time of the device itself, such that future measurements for obtaining physiological data will have correct time records. Such data recording can be used as a basis for evaluating the medication. For example, a diabetic patient may need to inject insulin or oral medications, and the recorded data may help the physician who prescribes medications to observe long-term developments and to timely modify the treatments in view of physiological conditions. Besides, manually setting the local time is not convenient and may increase the risk of errors. However, to make sure each one of the physiological monitoring devices having an accurate time is difficult. It is because of the ability of the inner working elements in the physiological monitoring device may deplete due to time elapse after starting to use the physiological monitoring device, especially the most important functions as time counting, and therefore do not sure the efficiency of time counting unit in the physiological monitoring device whether deteriorate, or the microprocessor which executes multiple functions at the same time, including time counting, may induce time delay. Furthermore, the mild time inaccuracy is hard to observe, but the time will still be delayed after accumulating a long period. Accordingly, the counting time of the physiological monitoring device usually has time error problems based on the reasons described above.
In addition, under the situation that the physiological monitoring device runs out of power and change of battery is required, or the user removes the battery for saving energy in the long run, time counting function in the physiological monitoring device stops, and continues to count time or restarts time counting only when the power recovers. This will lead to counting time delay or even serious errors, and the measured physiological data recorded thereafter will also have incorrect time. When reviewing the history measurement records, the physician may be unable to interpret the data because of chaotic records of the measurement time, such that diagnosis may be delayed and the condition may be worsened. In some serious cases, the prime treatment time may be missed, and the patient's life may be threatened. Therefore, in addition to calibrate the counting time of a physiological monitoring device itself to avoid generating physiological data with wrong time records in the future, it's also important to retrospectively calibrate the time records of existing physiological data.
In the past, accept the physiological data and time thereof recording from the physiological monitoring device instead of having intent to calibrate the time of the existing records is due to ignore the possibility that the physiological monitoring device may have time error issue. However, if the connection and calibration are conducted through wired connections, it will increase the cost of additional transmission lines from the aspect of manufacture. From the aspect of design, take a blood glucose meter for example, if the strip insertion slot is used as a transmission port, it will be unable to use the detection function of the meter when the transmission line is connected. On the other hand, if the strip insertion slot is not used as a transmission port, it will need to open another hole on the housing of the meter. This will increase the production cost of the mold. From the aspect of usage, damage on the transmission line may result in failure of time calibration or transmission. Also, the portable range of the physiological monitoring device during transmission will be limited.
Therefore, for related manufacturers, how to establish a system and a method for calibrating the time of a physiological monitoring device conveniently and to provide a standard range for the calibration of the physiological monitoring device have become issues waiting to be further improved, so as to prevent the user from troublesome time-setting operations such as repeatedly updating the time or errors caused by manual entry, and to provide complete and correct physiological data records.